by Paul Sussman
'You lying Arab bitch!'
He tried a third time, snorting like a wounded bull. This time the door gave. He stumbled forward, regained his footing, looked wildly around. Her bag and mobile phone were lying on the sofa. No sign of her. He ran into the study, the bedroom – empty. In the bathroom he saw the concrete stairs leading upwards, the open door at the top. He took them three at a time, barrelling out onto the roof terrace, the sky vast and white above him, the city spreading out all around. Nothing. He turned to double back on himself, thinking perhaps he'd somehow missed her down in the flat; then, hearing a car horn from the street below, he veered away to the edge of the roof, grasped the rusty iron rail running along its parapet and stared down at the Nablus Road beneath. He spotted her immediately, weaving through the traffic, too far away for him to stand any chance of catching up with her.
'You fucking bitch!' he yelled impotently. 'You fucking lying bitch!'
If she heard him she gave no sign of the fact, just hurried onwards, crossing Sultan Suleiman Street and disappearing into the throng of people jostling around the entrance to the Damascus Gate. He gazed after her, cursing, then, heaving his mobile phone from his pocket, jabbed a number into the keypad and held the unit to his ear.
'Duty desk? Ben-Roi. I need an immediate alert on Layla al-Madani. That's Layla al-Madani. Yes, the journalist. Top priority. She's somewhere in the Old City. I repeat – top priority.'
LUXOR
'Seven-thirty, eight at the latest. As soon as I get everything finished here. I love you too. More than anything in the world.'
Khalifa touched his lips to the phone and popped a flutter of kisses down the line, eyes half closed, as if it was Zenab's mouth he could feel rather than the cold impersonal plastic of the receiver. He lingered thus for a moment, then, with a final 'I love you', hung up and sat back in his chair, staring at the wooden Horus statue he had bought in Cairo, eyes red and puffy with exhaustion.
It was almost over, thank God. He'd already filled Ben-Roi in on everything. Now all he had to do was type up a report for Chief Hassani, set a few bureaucratic wheels in motion – getting the artefacts in Jansen's basement transferred to Luxor museum; filing an application for a posthumous pardon for Mohammed Gemal – and then he could wash his hands of the whole damned case and return to some semblance of normal life.
A holiday, that's what he wanted. Time alone with his family, away from thoughts of death and murder and hatred. Maybe they could all travel down to Aswan, visit his friend Shaaban, who worked there at the Old Cataract Hotel; or else go over to Hurghada for a few days, something they'd been talking of doing for years now but had never got around to. Yes, that's what he'd do: take the family to the seaside. They couldn't afford it, but what the hell. He'd scrape the cash together somehow. He smiled at the thought of Ali and Batah's faces as he told them about the planned trip; then, with a sigh, he lit a Cleopatra and leant forward over his desk.
Because before he could start thinking about holidays, close the case down once and for all and consign it to the gloomy netherworld of the station archives, there remained one final strand of the investigation to be resolved: the identity of the mysterious 'weapon' Piet Jansen had been trying to hand over to the Palestinian terrorist al-Mulatham.
It was a peripheral strand, and one to which, in all honesty, he could simply have turned a blind eye. He had, after all, done what he'd set out to do: he'd proved it was Jansen who murdered Hannah Schlegel, why he'd done it, and why al-Hakim had been so intent on protecting him. The weapon thing was a side issue, of importance to the Israelis perhaps, but with no obvious relevance to his own investigative remit. Despite that, and despite the uneasy throb in the pit of his stomach warning him that to continue delving could only bring more trouble and confusion and heartache, there remained a part of him – the 'pernickety, pig-headed, tight-arsed old biddy' part, as Chief Hassani styled it – that simply couldn't let the matter drop.
He dragged on his cigarette and picked up the sheaf of notes he'd scribbled after his interview with Inga Gratz. In a safe deposit box. That's what the old woman had said when he'd asked her about the weapon. I think he mentioned a safe deposit box once. But then another time he said he'd left all the details with an old friend, so who knows?
As far as deposit boxes were concerned, he already knew from legwork he'd put in earlier in the investigation that none of the major Egyptian banks had any safe deposit account under the name Piet Jansen. A quick ring-round after he had finished speaking with Ben-Roi had been enough to confirm they had no Dieter Hoth on their records either. There were other enquiries he could make, with smaller banks, private banks, international banks, and that was before he even started looking into banks abroad. But even if he called every single bank in Egypt, in the entire world, he sensed it wasn't going to do him any good. Everything he knew about Piet Jansen, everything he had found out these last two weeks, told him that he had been too cautious an operator, too canny and sly not to make sure he covered his tracks thoroughly, especially when it involved something as evidently important as this. If he did have a box somewhere it would be well hidden. Too well hidden, certainly, for him to track it down without a long and complicated search.
Which left the old woman's other comment, about leaving the details with an old friend. What friend?
All the way back from Cairo he had dwelt on this, turning the old woman's words over and over in his mind, visiting and revisiting every aspect of the case, trying to work out who Jansen might have been referring to, who he would have trusted sufficiently with that sort of information. The Gratzes clearly didn't know. Al-Hakim was a possibility, but he was dead, as were all the other members of the fugitive circle to which Jansen had belonged. Maybe it was someone he hadn't yet come across in his investigations. Someone from Jansen's days with the SS, perhaps, or his work as an archaeologist. Or maybe from even further back. Someone buried deep beneath the sands of time. Someone it would be even harder to track down than it would Jansen's safe deposit box. It seemed hopeless, absolutely hopeless.
He went through his notes once, twice, three times, then, with an exhausted sigh, pushed himself away from the desk, stood up and wandered over to the office window.
'Let it go,' he muttered to himself. 'For once in your bloody life stop being a pernickety, tight-arsed old biddy and just let it go.'
He finished his cigarette and, leaning his elbows on the windowsill, gazed down at the scene below: a tourist haggling with a shop-owner; two old men sitting on the pavement edge playing siga in the dust; a young boy petting a scrawny Alsatian dog, the animal kicking its legs and waggling its tail, evidently enjoying the attention. This last tableau momentarily reminded him of something, some scene he'd witnessed before, although he couldn't recall what. After thinking about it for a while he shrugged it away, pulled his head back into the room and, returning to the desk, started to tidy up his notes.
Under one pile of paper he found a plastic evidence bag containing Jansen's pistol, under another the dead man's house keys and wallet. He lifted the latter, stared at it, put it down, continued with his tidying. After a couple of moments, however, he stopped and again picked up the wallet, a frown suddenly crumpling his forehead. He turned it over in his hand, glanced at the window, then, opening it, sunk his fingers into one of the inside pockets and slipped out the crumpled black and white photograph of Jansen as a young boy, squatting beside his Alsatian dog. As he did so, the words of Carla Shaw echoed at the back of his mind, from the night they'd interviewed her at the Menna-Ra.
Arminius. A childhood pet. Piet was always going on about him. Used to say he was the only real friend he'd ever had. The only person he'd ever really trusted. Talked about him like he was a human.
Safe deposit box, old friend.
'Dammit,' he whispered, a curious, confused expression spreading across his face, part excitement, part reluctance.
He hesitated. Then, leaning forward, he picked up the phone.
It took just two calls. Bank of Alexandria, Luxor branch, safe deposit account in the name Mr Arminius.
'Bloody dammit.'
JERUSALEM
'Yalla, yalla. Come on, come on. Where the fuck are you?'
Layla glanced down at her watch, aware that every minute would be bringing the Israelis closer, then stepped back into the fog of shadows gathered around the margins of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the pounding of her heart seeming to vibrate through the entire building as if someone was banging at its foundations with a heavy iron sledgehammer.
She had no idea how the detective had found out about the letter she'd been sent, the request to help contact al-Mulatham, Dieter Hoth, any of it. At this juncture it wasn't relevant. What she did know – had known from the moment she'd first clapped eyes on him – was that he was dangerous, more dangerous than any Israeli she'd ever encountered, except possibly Har-Zion. That's why she'd lied to him. That's why she'd done a runner (in the process clocking the battered white BMW parked outside, the same BMW she had seen so many times before keeping tabs on her apartment late at night). And that's why she'd come here to find the old Jewish man, take this one, last, desperate opportunity to shed some light on what it was William de Relincourt had found beneath the floor of the church. It was a long-shot. The old man was almost certainly mad, or senile. Probably both. It was the only shot she had left, however. She had to find out what she was dealing with here. Give herself at least one small bargaining chip . . .
'Come on,' she hissed, banging her fist against the dark, sweaty pillar beside her. 'Please! Where the fuck are you?'
Another twenty minutes passed – slow, agonizing minutes, a water-torture of nervous expectation – and she had all but given up, convinced the old man wasn't going to come, when finally, from the far side of the church, she at last heard the sound for which she had been so desperately waiting – the distant, rhythmic clack of a walking stick.
The old man hobbled into the Rotunda and, as he had done when she'd seen him before, made his way across to the covered cube of the Aedicule. He removed a yarmulke and a small Torah from his jacket and began to pray, his body creaking back and forth, the soft, staccato rasp of his voice floating upwards into the dome above like the sound of leaves whispering in a breeze. She remained where she was until he had finished, watching, waiting; then, as he returned the skullcap and prayer-book to his pocket, she stepped from the shadows and, casting a nervous glance towards the church entrance, went across to him and gently touched him on the elbow.
'Excuse me.'
He turned, unsteadily, like a clockwork toy whose mechanism has all but wound itself down.
'I was wondering if I could talk to you about a man called William de Relincourt. One of the priests here told me you might know something about him.'
Up close, he seemed even more geriatric than he had done from a distance, his body twisted and bent, his face so deeply lined it looked as if the least jolt would cause it to shatter and disintegrate. An unpleasant, faintly sickly smell hung about him, unwashed clothes mixed with something deeper, more elemental – an odour of poverty, failure, decay. Only his eyes seemed to tell a different story, for although they were jaundiced and bloodshot, they were also alert, suggesting that if his body was all but clapped-out, his mind certainly wasn't.
'It won't take long,' she added, flicking another anxious look towards the entrance. 'Just a couple of minutes. Five at the most.'
He said nothing, just stared up at her, his mouth hanging half-open like a gash sliced in a piece of worn leather. There was an uneasy silence, the only sound the whoosh and flutter of wings as high above them a pigeon flew round and round inside the Rotunda's white and gold dome; then, with a grunt and a shake of the head, the old man turned and began to shuffle away. She assumed he wasn't going to talk to her and her heart sank. To her surprise, and relief, rather than heading towards the church entrance he hobbled over to the bench on which four days earlier she'd sat with Father Sergius and lowered himself down onto it, indicating that she should join him. She threw yet another look towards the doorway, then went over and sat down.
'You're that Arab woman, aren't you?' he said once she was settled, leaning forward on his stick, his voice broken and faltering, as if heard over a bad telephone connection. 'The journalist.'
She admitted that, yes, she was a journalist.
He nodded. 'I know your work.' A beat, then, 'Sewage. Lies, bigotry, anti-semitism. It disgusts me. You disgust me.'
He swivelled his head towards her, then away again, dropping his eyes to the floor.
'Although to be fair, not as much as I disgust myself. My onesh olam, my eternal punishment: to live in a world where the only people who wish to listen to what I have to say are the ones to whom I least wish to say it.'
He smiled faintly, the expression somehow conveying the exact opposite of amusement, and, hunching forward, prodded with his stick at a line of ants processing along the edge of a crack between paving stones.
'Sixty years I've been trying to tell them. Written letters, made appointments. But they won't listen. Why should they, after what I did? Maybe if I had something I could show them . . . but I don't. It's just my word. And they won't listen to that. Not after what I did. So maybe I should be grateful for your interest. Although I doubt even you'll believe it. Not without the proof. And there is no proof. No photographs, no tracings, nothing. It's hopeless. Hoth kept the lot.'
She had been on the point of interrupting this rambling monologue, desperate to bring the conversation back to William de Relincourt, terrified that at any moment a squad of Israeli police were going to come bursting into the church to arrest her. This last comment stopped her in her tracks. She swivelled on the seat, her fears receding as her attention homed in, laser-like, on what the old man had just said.
'You knew Dieter Hoth?'
'Hmm?' The old man was still poking at the line of ants. 'Oh, yes. I worked for him. In Egypt. Alexandria. I was his epigrapher.'
One minute Hoth and his team are excavating in Egypt, at a site just outside Alexandria; the next he's rushing back to Berlin for some top-secret meeting with Himmler. Layla's stomach tightened as she recalled the words of Jean-Michel Dupont. He does know something, she thought. My God, he does know something. Except . . .
'I thought Hoth was an anti-semite. Why would he—'
'Employ someone like me?' Again the old man's mouth twisted into that bitter, grimacing smile, his fingers clasping and unclasping around the handle of his stick. 'Because he didn't know I was a Jew, of course. None of them did – Jankuhn, von Sievers, Reinerth. None of them. Never suspected. Why should they when I was the biggest Jew-hater of the lot?'
He sighed, a thin, despairing sound that blew from deep within him like air escaping from a punctured balloon, and, sat back against the pillar behind the bench, gazing up into the dome above.
'Fooled them all, I did. Every one of them. So clever. Went to the rallies, sang the songs, joined in the book burnings. The perfect little Nazi. And you know for what?' He winced. 'Because I loved history. Wanted to be an archaeologist. Can you believe that? Cut out my own heart because I wanted to dig holes in the ground. And as a Jew I couldn't get the necessary qualifications, not the way things were in those days. So I stopped being a Jew and became one of them instead. Changed my name, got false papers, joined the Nazi Party. Betrayed everything. Because I wanted to dig holes in the ground. Is it any wonder they won't listen to me? A Jew who turned his back on his own people. A moser. Is it any wonder?'
He looked across at her, eyes moistening, then away again. She could see that he was upset, knew that she ought to tread carefully. There wasn't time, however; there just wasn't time.
'What happened in Alexandria?' she said, trying, and failing, to hide the urgency in her voice. 'What did you mean when you said you don't have any photographs or tracings?'
He didn't reply, just stared up at a heavy beam of sunlight slanting downwards from the skyli
ght in the apex of the dome high above, like a thick golden rope.
Layla paused a second, then, more from instinct than any clear notion that it might help the situation, added: 'I know what it's like. To lie. The loneliness. I understand. We're the same. Please help me. Please.'
From somewhere behind them there was a shout and the sound of hurrying feet, which caused her to start and turn. It was only a couple of Syrian Jacobite priests hurrying to prayer, their black robes billowing around them like wings, and she turned back almost immediately. The old man was staring directly at her. He held her gaze, his eyes seeming to push right into hers, his lower lip quivering slightly. There was another unbearable pause.
'November the fourth.' It was barely audible.
'Sorry?'
'That's when we found it. November the fourth. The inscription.'
His voice was so low that Layla had to lean right forward to catch what he was saying.